I’m thinking of doing my paradigm shift on Hacktivism and how it’s looked upon nowadays. Hacktivism is the use of computers, the internet, and networking to promote political ends. As technology and security has become more complicated and sophisticated, so have hacktivists’ methods in reaching their goals. Two infamous groups include Anonymous and Lulz Security (LulzSec). Some of their exploits include basic attacks to crash the website of the Church of Scientology, hacking and defacing the government-affiliated company InfraGard’s website, taking down the CIA’s website for 2 hours, and finding and alerting the UK National Health Service of a security vulnerability on their website.

Now, as one can see, there is a very vague sense of good or bad with the acts of these groups. Their motivations may be personal, for fun, or may actually have some larger goal. In the case of larger goals, large-scale hacks have also come from private state bodies and countries. At the same time, legitimate companies have endorsed the use of hacking to achieve ends. During the Arab Spring, when Egypt tried shutting down the internet, Google, Twitter, and SayNow, produced “Speak2Tweet” which allowed anyone to leave a message on certain telephone numbers which were immediately placed on twitter.

As of recent, Hacktivism has grown to encompass anyone with access to a computer and the right skills. Very recently a teenager hacked into the CIA director’s personal email and gained access to some very sensitive government information and then proceeded to practically brag about it to any and all news stations that would hear it. If hacking has become possible by so many means, does that mean it has become a more prevalent manner of activism? Is there an associated decline in other forms that can exemplify the change in mode? Also, as it does become more common, is it more acceptable and will technology and security be able to keep up or vice versa? This is what I would like to answer or at least discuss.